By Steve Seepersaud
Is something an obstacle or an opportunity? Dan Kosick '00, MSW '06, says you get to decide. He shared his answer with an audience of about 70 people April 11, at the Center of Excellence Symposium Hall. The program, "Life Without Limitation," was part of the speaker series TIER Talks® presented by M&T Bank and the Binghamton University Alumni Association.
At age 15, Kosick felt a strange pain in his ankle that turned out to be cancer. After his right leg was amputated, he received a prosthetic leg. Kosick learned to walk, and eventually began running on his artificial limb — and that was how his journey to becoming an elite athlete began. He earned his way onto the U.S. Disabled Alpine Skiing Team and competed in the Winter Paralympics in 1998 and 2002.
"Being a member of the [team] was one of the best experiences of my life," Kosick said. "One, because of the reward and how much I put into it and how it paid off. But, also, it was this huge opportunity of growth because I was a teenager coming from Johnson City, and I was now able to travel the world."
Today, Kosick is a middle-school social worker and lacrosse and swimming coach in the Binghamton area. The competitive juices still flow, as he is active on the obstacle course racing scene. He competes in the annual Tough Mudder world championship and among his recent noteworthy accomplishments is summiting Cotopaxi, an active stratovolcano (a conical volcano built up by layers of hardened lava) in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador.
"I took in the views [at Cotopaxi] as best as I could," he said. "I want to say the experience was literally burned into me because no one [told] me the sulphuric gas that comes out of an active volcano burns your eyes. So, 45 minutes of crying because it was awesome and because your eyes are burning will never leave me.
"Because I took on this new adventure...I was fortunate enough to become a Merrell brand ambassador in 2018. Every athlete grows up wanting to be sponsored by a shoe company. And, here I was, at 41, getting a shoe sponsor, which was pretty cool."
George Catalano, SUNY distinguished service professor and professor of biomedical engineering at Binghamton University, talked about the work his students are doing to solve accessibility problems. One of his senior capstone project teams used 3D printing to develop a prosthetic hand for Sue Riegel, a campus dining employee who lost her limb nearly 40 years ago in an industrial accident.
"[A group of] students would go for coffee every morning and they became friends with her...and they came to me and said 'can we design a prosthetic arm and hand for Sue?' I said it would be challenging, but they had a lot of enthusiasm. To see her wearing the hand is so incredibly rewarding."
Catalano's students work with a number of local organizations. One of those is Fargnoli Farms in Apalachin, N.Y., a horse farm where autistic and disabled children engage in therapeutic rides. He showed the audience a video of dogs walking at animal sanctuary Willow's Wings with wheelchairs.
"[Their] thing is no matter how sick or how old the animal is, that animal deserves a life, that animal deserves love, just like I think we all aspire to have," Catalano said.
The Alumni Association launched TIER Talks in 2014 to showcase the University's intellectual content, and provide a forum for alumni and faculty experts to share perspectives on hot topics. M&T Bank has been the exclusive presenting sponsor since the inception of the series.
"For the bank to be successful, we need the community to be successful," said Peter Newman, MBA '98, regional president for M&T Bank in Binghamton. "We clearly have a very vibrant community in great part because of this fantastic university. And we want to emphasize to the broader community the intellectual capacity that we have at this institution."
